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Play Based Coaching is the answer to your question about Kids Life Coaching!

Uncategorized Feb 27, 2026

DISCLAIMER...do NOT read this if you are not ready to hear the truth about Play Based Coaching. This is not AI generated and solely my own thoughts and writing. 

I’ve spent over two decades working with children and young people, starting my early career as a special needs school teacher and later completing a Master’s in Clinical Child Psychology as a mature student. Then in 2022/2023, I was a Doctoral reader in Psychiatry at Oxford University and involved in a £24 million research project relating to ACE's (Adverse Childhood Experiences).
 
Yet NONE of this means a thing when it comes to my Play Based Coaching System® which I designed in 2003.
 
Since the pandemic, I have been navigating a brand new landscape. One that was non existent but now flooded with mediocre kids life coaches. Multiple companies popping up to offer "accredited training" and making claims they cannot keep and thinking that hiding behind a badge and tick boxes is enough to hold them accountable. I have bui...
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When passion isn't enough: How to build a sustainable Kids Life Coaching Practice

Uncategorized Feb 11, 2026

I remember the days I used to feel so overwhelmed by the everyday admin of running my very own Kids Life Coaching practice. It was way back in 2003 when I was still teaching and supporting children as a school counsellor.

I had this HUGE dream...it was to transform children's minds and to support families to navigate the ups and downs of life. I had seen it for too long in my classroom.

Children struggling to learn, parents not knowing what to do and teachers almost always referring them to psychologists for therapy. 

I knew there was a better way, which led to me launching my kids life coaching practice part-time while still hanging onto my job that I loved. I had just finished my Honours Degree in Education and I piloted a family programme that I had designed as one of my assignments. The uptake was so positive and the results so profound that parents started asking me for individual coaching sessions. 

So I built what the parents asked for. A Play Based Coaching System® that was...

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Rebranding Childhood®: How to coach children to get unstuck!

Uncategorized Jan 19, 2026

 This weekend I hosted a family from London for an immersive coaching day in the New Forest. Going through a separation, the day was meant to be a time to recalibrate and to find their "new normal"! It was a day filled with neuroscience based activities in a wonderful hotel venue I love using but where the family really did their best work was outdoors.

After a few days of rain, it felt fitting that the skies were blue and the sun was shining. Although it was crisp and cold, we wrapped up warm and went for a lovely intuitive walk. There were many AHA moments I can share like skipping stones through large puddles, hugging trees, wild ponies pausing to say hello...but the moment I want to share is one that I see so often in many families I work with. 

During our nature walk, the little girl kept her wellies as clean as possible. Until I challenged her to stomp in the mud. She took the challenge and eventually got stuck in the mud. Her wellies sank so deeply that when sh

...
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Rebranding Childhood®: 4 things children need instead of New Years Resolutions

Uncategorized Dec 23, 2025

 

Holding Children Steady Without Resolutions

As the year winds down, something familiar shows up in homes, classrooms, and play spaces everywhere.

Children become louder. Shorter-tempered. More distracted. Sleep gets wobbly. Big feelings spill out over small things. Routines that worked for months suddenly fall apart.

This isn’t misbehavior.
This is what I like to call end-of-year fever.

In my over two decades of coaching children, I have seen what happens at this time of the year.  I know that children feel the shift long before us adults name it. Calendars change. Energy changes. Grown-ups talk about “next year,” “fresh starts,” and “doing better.” Even when we try to keep things light, kids sense the pressure in the air.

As a Play Based Coach, this is not the moment to tighten control, or to rush into goal-setting and New Year’s resolutions. It’s a moment to slow down, soften expectations, and offer something far more regulating: play, presence, and permission to land.

What E...

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Rethinking how we understand labels in childhood as Kids Life Coaches

Uncategorized Nov 24, 2025

In professional settings such as schools, clinics and therapy rooms,  we often hear children described with shorthand labels: “bipolar,” “ADHD,” “oppositional,” “anxious.” These labels can feel useful. They allow adults to communicate quickly, allocate resources, or structure interventions.

But here’s the question few stop to ask: do labels help children, or do they help adults manage our own uncertainty?


Labels simplify complexity at a cost

A label provides a tidy story. It offers certainty where there is none. But children are not tidy. They are dynamic systems — biological, emotional, and social — interacting with the world in ways that are constantly changing.

The danger of labeling a child lies in the feedback loop it creates. Once a child is given a diagnostic label, every behaviour can be interpreted through that lens. Adults may unconsciously expect the behaviour to continue, and the child may internalise the label as part of their identity. The result? A self-fulfillin...

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The Play Protocol® - A methodology used globally by world class Kids Life Coaches and Mentors

Uncategorized Nov 17, 2025

 

Where a New Story for Childhood Begins

There is a moment, usually quiet and unplanned, when you realise that the work you’ve been doing for decades has slowly grown into something bigger than you ever intended. Not because you mapped it out meticulously. Not because you forced it, but because it was ready. Because you were ready. Because the world needed it, even before you had the language for it.

My Play Protocol® was born in that kind of moment.

Not out of frustration with what exists, but out of a deep sense that something more was possible for children and for the adults supporting them. Not a shiny new method or a clever framework, but a way of being with children that feels human again. Honest. Uplifting. Grounded and refreshingly uncomplicated.

For years, I watched people who care deeply about children—parents, doctors, coaches, teachers, youth workers, community leaders—trying to navigate heavy emotional landscapes with tools that were never designed for everyday life. ...

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A Playful Way for Kids Life Coaches to Attract the Right Clients

Uncategorized Nov 10, 2025

 

If you’re a Kids Life Coach, you already know the magic that happens when children and families reconnect with curiosity, courage, and confidence. You witness small moments of growth, bravery, and connection and you know that coaching isn’t about fixing anyone, but about supporting transformation in a way that’s playful, relational, and meaningful.

Yet when it comes to talking about your own coaching practice, that same ease and playfulness can vanish. Marketing suddenly feels like a performance. We overthink the words, try to sound “professional enough,” or get stuck wondering if what we say will land with our clients.

I know that feeling well. At the start of my coaching career, almost two decades ago, I used to waffle a lot! Can you relate?

Then I started to wonder: what if sharing my work didn’t have to feel like me talking too much and listening too little? What if the same qualities I was bringing to my coaching sessions: curiosity, creativity, and genuine connection, could...

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What is your plan as a Kids Life Coach?

Uncategorized Nov 03, 2025

“What’s the life task here? Never mind what you want. What does life want?”

That question stopped me recently. I had been thinking about coaching sessions, programs, outcomes — all the things we want to achieve as children’s life coaches. Progress, impact, change. But the question shifted my focus completely. What if coaching isn’t always about what we plan or want to make happen? What if it’s more about listening to what life itself is asking of us in each moment?

In our work with children, structure gives us safety. We rely on session plans, frameworks, goals, and measurable outcomes. They help us feel prepared and give families confidence in the process. Yet, the truth we all know — quietly, somewhere underneath — is that the most powerful moments in coaching almost never happen according to plan.

They arrive in pauses, in detours, in those unexpected turns where a child says something that changes everything. Sometimes, it’s the question you didn’t expect to ask, or the silence ...

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How to reframe your mindset as a Kids Life Coach so that you get results even with "Bad Children"

Uncategorized Oct 27, 2025

 Permission to rant!

One of my biggest pet peeves after working with children in various capacities for over two decades is this: when a teacher, parent, psychologist, or sports coach judges a child by their behavior and calls them a “bad kid.”

Even worse? When they declare:

“There is no hope.”
“They’ll end up in prison or dead.”

What the actual heck %$#*?? (Apologies for the sweary symbols...but this is how strongly I feel!)

Here’s the truth: bad behaviour does not equal a bad child. I have taught, counselled and coached tens of thousands of children over the past 25 years and not once have I met a "bad child"!

Children act out for reasons many adults often overlook out of ignorance. These reasons are all valid and rooted in neuroscience, emotional development, and unmet needs. When a child misbehaves, it’s rarely about defiance for its own sake. Often, it’s about communication, coping, or trying to meet a need they cannot articulate.

At Kids Life Studio®, you will hear our ...

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How to get clients as a Kids Life Coach without trying too hard.

Uncategorized Oct 20, 2025

 

How to Get Clients Without Trying So Hard

We’ve all been there. That awkward moment when someone casually asks the question:
“So, what do you do?”

In my early career as a Kids Life Coach, I used to stumble through the answer. I would try so hard to get people to understand my work that I often ended up overexplaining. To be honest, I’m blushing even now thinking about those awkward early conversations!

These days, my answer is pretty simple and playful:
“I play for a living.”

That one sentence sparks curiosity, creates conversation, and opens doors. Why? Because it’s authentic, aligned with what I do, and it invites people in rather than overwhelming them.

But it wasn’t always this way for me. Like many coaches, I used to believe that if I just explained enough, people would “get it” and sign up. The truth is, when we push too hard, we can come across as unsure, desperate, or even salesy none of which builds trust. I know this because I have personally made these mistakes!

Why S...

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